Page 60 of Anchor
“How dare I what?” I ask, my voice husky.
“You’re breaking up with me during sex?” she asks incredulously.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
She gestures wildly with her head and rolls her eyes. “Thisisn’t going to work for you?”
Words fail me, so I laugh against her throat.
“Oh, I’m glad you think this is so funny,” she says.
I leverage up on one hand so I can use the other to brush away the hair from her face. Her eyes are glittering and her full lips are pressed into a line.
Using my thumb, I draw across her lower lip and then take it into my mouth, leaving it glistening from my attention. “I’m not breaking up with you, baby.”
I take my finger now and swipe it across her lip to gather the moisture, then I trail it down her stomach. Her breath hitches in her chest when my hand reaches between us to stroke her.
“T-then what did you mean?”
“I want you,” I say.
Her lips twitch. “Yeah, I think I got the message.”
“No,” I say, trying to concentrate on the right words, which is hard when she clenches around me like she’s trying to make us two parts of one whole. “I mean I don’t want you to leave.”
Her expression softens and she leans up to kiss me with pouty lips. “I don’t want to leave, either.”
My pace quickens and her breath catches. “Then don’t.”
She arches, baring her neck to me and I lave kisses along the line of her throat. “God, if you don’t get to the point, I’m going to go crazy here.”
I take her face in my hands and capture her gaze with mine as she wraps her now free arms around me. We’re connected in every possible way, and I wouldn’t want it any other way.
“Marry me,” I say.
“What?” she asks.
“Marry me,” I say again.
“Oh, God, Gabe,” she moans.
Her fingers dig into my sides and she constricts around me without warning. Throaty moans fill the air around me and I lose focus as everything goes white-hot.
A few minutes—or hours—later, when I manage to catch my breath, I say, “I’m going to take that as a yes.”
Ben
“I’mglad you were able to take some time to come see your momma before you took off again.”
I wrap her into a bear hug, the kind I used to use to piss her off with as a kid because she’d always been so much smaller than me. “You saw me a few months ago.” I kiss her hair and inhale the scent of her perfume. Something inside me hitches, but I shove it away. “Besides, I remember you yelling at me to get the hell out when I was eighteen. So, really, you’re the reason I joined the Marines in the first place.”
She laughs, but it’s watery. I don’t know what to do other than squeeze her a little tighter. She takes a deep breath and then pushes me away. We both ignore the fact that her eyes are still rimmed with red. “Get out of here. Jack’s been calling all afternoon. I swear it’s like the two of you are sixteen again.”
I kiss her once more. “Save me some of the ribs and rice, woman.”
“I’ll fix you a plate before your father eats it all. Now go.”
The creaky front door slams behind her and I hear her yelling at my dad about anything that will distract her from the fact that I am deploying in just a few days.